"The truth is, humans aren’t the smartest creatures in the Republic, in fact we’re on the low end of average. We aren’t the strongest creatures, though we are in the upper 20 percentile for creatures from small, rocky worlds. We aren’t the fastest, or best coordinated, though we can hold our own there too. What we are is the most vicious, violent, destructive creatures ever to join the Republic. When hardened criminals learn that we’ve been hired to hunt them down, they surrender on mass to whatever other species is at hand.”
This is an excerpt from Freedom’s Law, the sequel to Cloning Freedom. I wanted to spell out humans’ position in the interstellar republic. The idea that we might destroy ourselves before we get much more advanced than we presently are is not a new one. Also the thought that various species would compare with various levels of physical prowess dependent on the environment they developed in is nothing new.
What I wanted to touch on was how factors like these would affect our position in a multi species society. In most science fiction little more than lip service is paid to beings having differing physical capacities. Think of the fights between humans and Vulcans in Star Trek. If Vulcans were truly as strong as they say the humans shouldn’t stand a chance.
As is stated above, humans don’t have much going for us except aggression. I’ve seen cat fights where the smaller cat won simply because it was more aggressive. This happens throughout creatures that combat each other. A word of advice is never attack a young creature if its mother is around. If the mother is of a protective bent anything short of lethal force and you will not stop her. Humans are much like this in the Switch Board universe. We may not have much going for us, but we’re nuts with what we do have.
“Eight-hundred years ago humans worked out star-gate technology. By focussing the energy release of a supernova into paired, trans-matter rings, it’s possible to create a wormhole that circumvents space-time. A point to point FTL transit from the opening in one ring to the opening in the other.”
“But how?”
“If I was that smart, I’d be at the Hawking Institute for Advanced Studies. Does this look like the Hawking Institute for Advanced Studies?” Ryan gestured around him comically.
In Cloning Freedom Rowan was a Doctoral Candidate in Physics in the set region. The set region’s technology was set at approximately 2010 CE. This was for a verity of reasons that are addressed in the text. As such when she is jerked forward through thousands of years of technical development she is more than a little awed and intimidated by it. The above scene is all about that but more importantly about how little it matters in a practical sense.
I must ask, do you know how electricity works? You probably use it every day but the real nitty gritty of it is outside the realm of most folks. I know that cells in my pancreas create insulin but I would be at a loss to explain how.
The simple truth is the full body of human knowledge far outstrips the capacity of any one person to be fully knowledgeable. The concept of the resonance man is a thing of the past. This does not excuse ignorance. I do hold that it is possible to have what I call a children’s book understanding of many topics. This is general knowledge. I can understand the basic principals of how a nuclear reactor works without being able to build or design one. I can understand Bernoulli’s principle without building a plane. We all specialize.
Another thing that I revisit several times in the book is that despite the high tech human needs remain the same. A mag lev train allows Ryan to commute between contents but shorten the distance and lower the speed the reality is the same as taking a train in to a city core from the suburbs. I’m sure there were ancient Egyptians who had to catch the fairy across the Nile to get to work and cursed if they missed it. Humans haven’t changed so the applied technologies remain similar. As for Rowan, she learns what she can and focuses on what is useful like us all.
“I’m sure it’s not. No EVA ever is, but we don’t have a choice. I’m going to have to dig us out. If I can do it so that I can get the hull patched under cover of these rocks than that’s even better.”
This line from Cloning Freedom points out a realization that I think comes to anybody that works in emergency services or other high risk professions. Some things are simply not safe, necessary, but not safe.
I was a lifeguard for a very long time and was disgusted when in training a young pup ridiculed me because I used a reaching assist to do a rescue. He went on that we were trained to ‘a higher standard.’ I pointed out that we weren’t there to look macho but to save lives as efficiently as possible and that a dry rescue was a safe rescue. I’ve done rescues both wet and dry, real and in training, but my guide has always been minimal risk.
On another occasion, while I was training for the ambulance, I stood in a pool of gasoline as we extracted a potential spinal injury. We worked fast but not frantic and there was a Fireman with an extinguisher who had us covered in case something happened. Again, the situation was inherently risky, but we did what we had to with what safe guards we could arrange.
This realization of risk is part and parcel of life in general. We are all always at risk, by accepting it and minimizing the risk we create a modicum of safety even in the most dangerous of situations.
In my opinion embracing unnecessary risk is foolish. This doesn’t mean you don’t climb the mountain, it means you check your ropes. It doesn’t mean you let the person drown, it does mean you have the tools in your skill set to do the least dangerous rescue that saves the person.
In Cloning Freedom I have my protagonists doing a host of risky things but always in the sense that what they do is the best of a bunch of bad options.
“Way back in human history, during the era known as the twentieth-century CE, humans had a primitive form of entertainment. Dramas were performed and recorded then shared with an audience through a variety of means.” The hologram smiled condescendingly. “They were restricted to the senses of hearing and sight and had no emotional input.”
‘Television and movies. He’s talking about television and movies like they were hieroglyphs,’ thought Rowan.
I often wonder what our descendants will think of us. In Tinker’s Plague, another of my novels, they blamed us for the mess we left them. Having studied several ancient cultures I will say that the view of them as primitive is erroneous. They may have lacked some advancement in materials technology but what they did with what they had was amazing.
That said I must say I am not fond of Rome. Being I reincarnationist I am fond of saying that I didn’t like it when I followed Pyrrhus, and I still don’t like Rome. They were of course brilliant civil engineers and came up with the concept of total war, much to their shame and all our loss.
I am very fond of the Egyptians, the Celts and the Norse. All of these were cultures of greatness vastly superior to many cultures that followed them. At least in my opinion.
In Cloning Freedom I have people who view us in a verity of ways. I think it is safe to say that no one would want to have lived during the gene wars, history didn’t leap over the years between now and the now of the book. Looking back I’m sure Ryan can see glories and tragedies. Most people have a good take on the early 21st century from the E-entertainments and those who like repeats will have been exposed to other time periods. That said the view they do have is skewed like many peoples knowledge of WW2 because the entertainment industry is not a faithful reporter of history.
Scrambling over the cold water pipe, Ryan stood on the walkway enjoying the cooler air inside. After steadying himself he inspected the wiring. A minute later he held the insulated alligator clips open over a power feed.
“OK, here goes. Trust in insulation. I have faith in insulation. If this doesn’t work, I’m barbeque.”
Having done more than my fair share of home handyman projects, including electrical wiring, I can tell you this sentiment comes from experience. The worst case was when I had cut the power to the socket. I tested it by plugging a fan in and making sure it was dead then proceeded to cut out the wall around it. Little did I know that the fellow who had first done the wiring had run two feeds to the socket splicing them to use a common return. Saw hit wire and I found myself on the other side of the room.
Ryan’s concern is magnified by voltage. I have to say that my faith in insulation is limited as is my faith in ground fault. I’ve seen people run extension cords through ponds of water with children nearby at public events. When I challenged them on it they said it was insulated and put into a ground fault.
Safety measures are supposed to augment common sense not replace it. Electricity and water are a bad mix, as is wonky wiring that breaks code. In Cloning Freedom I show that many laws are silly and intrusive, but basic safety regulations based on the laws of nature do not fall in this category. So unless you are busy saving your lady love from a murderous cooperation please don’t trust in insulation, and do use common sense.
“No! I have to see Kadar. Tell him it’s Ryan from the Star Hawk. Tell him... Tell him Wesnakee.”
Wesnakee, don’t try to look it up it doesn’t exist, yet. The idea that a shared history becomes a kind of code is nothing new. Intelligence agencies have been using it for as long as there have been intelligence agencies. Words can take on heavy meanings to individuals beyond anything that a dictionary will ever define. This is epically true of people who have shared life changing experiences.
Wesnakee to most folk is nothing. To people who have read Cloning Freedom it is first and foremost a bar on the switchboard station (more on that later) that won’t become important until the sequel, Freedom’s Law, except for its shared history between Ryan and Kadar.
In the sentence above Ryan is saying, ‘I nearly died saving your life and lost a part of myself that haunts me to this day. You owe me, and by the gods if there is any of the friend I knew left in you, you will pay this debt today.” It’s a lot to put into a word and if you want the details you need to help get Cloning Freedom published. This particular story of Wesnakee is told in Cloning Freedom though you don’t see the bar itself until Freedoms Law.
Don’t let the sequel worry you. Cloning Freedom comes to a conclusion. The sequel simply goes on as life tends to.
“No! I have to see Kadar. Tell him it’s Ryan from the Star Hawk. Tell him... Tell him Wesnakee.”
Wesnakee, don’t try to look it up it doesn’t exist, yet.
The idea that a shared history becomes a kind of code is nothing new. Intelligence agencies have been using it for as long as there have been intelligence agencies. Words can take on heavy meanings to individuals beyond anything that a dictionary will ever define. This is epically true of people who have shared life changing experiences.
Wesnakee to most folk is nothing. To people who have read Cloning Freedom it is first and foremost a bar on the switchboard station (more on that later) that won’t become important until the sequel, Freedom’s Law, except for its shared history between Ryan and Kadar.
In the sentence above Ryan is saying, ‘I nearly died saving your life and lost a part of myself that haunts me to this day. You owe me, and by the gods if there is any of the friend I knew left in you, you will pay this debt today.” It’s a lot to put into a word and if you want the details you need to help get Cloning Freedom published.
This particular story of Wesnakee is told in Cloning Freedom though you don’t see the bar itself until Freedoms Law.
Don’t let the sequel worry you. Cloning Freedom comes to a conclusion. The sequel simply goes on as life tends to.
Rowan swallowed. Henry being serious told her more about their chances than she wanted to know.
Upcoming in Cloning Freedom.
Henry was an interesting character to write. He is a complete pig when it comes to sexuality, for reasons you’ll need to read the book to understand. He is also one of the most loyal friends, in his own I know what’s best for you kind of way, anyone could ever have. With an enhanced processing speed that mean he is done most analyses in seconds he is also one of the most board beings in the galaxy.
Having completed the rough draft of Cloning Freedom I was afraid that Henry would not play with women. Let’s face it, he crude and a jerk to deal with. What surprised me is that the women who critiqued the early drafts loved him. On the page what would be annoying in life was both funny and in a strange way endearing. I fully expected to have to tone Henry down to make the book readable but thus far if anything I could have played him up a bit more. It really just goes to show you that you never know with readers.
Hi one and all. One of the things that has always surprised me about science fiction is how often medical science has remained more or less static. I look at the advances in the medical field made in my lifetime thus far and am astounded by this. In Cloning Freedom I wanted to address this. Thus later in the book you have the following scene. I will mention that Kadar is an old friend of Ryan’s who happens to be a doctor.
Kadar patted her hand. “If Ryan is doing what I think he’s doing, I wouldn’t worry too much. He has a place in mind where your origin won’t matter.”
“Nice to know. So why’s he different? Why’s he a clone?”
“Murack Five.” Kadar’s dark complexion blanched.
“I’ve heard the name, but I don’t know what it is.”
“It is a planet. There was a war. I do not wish to discuss the rest. Let us leave it that both Ryan and I received a massive dose of radiation. It so damaged us that nothing but the most radical of treatments was a viable option. It was, in effect, a death sentence, but Ryan was only eighty-seven at the time.”
“EIGHTY-SEVEN!” Rowan’s gaze leapt to Ryan then locked gazes with Kadar.
“My dear, did you think medicine would have failed to advance in the years separating the technologies we are accustom to? The average human, without use of cloning, can expect to live approximately two hundred Earth standard years. That’s about one-hundred and ninety New Gaea years, give or take based on individual biology.”
“Two hundred... Star dust!” Rowan’s already pale skin grew even lighter. “So he was eighty-seven. What was he doing in combat?”
Kadar smiled. “Paying his son’s way through university. Rowan, you cannot think of him as an unaltered human of the age of eighty-seven. Think of him as a man who was just entering his middle-years. Perhaps thirty-five by your standards.”
“Wow. OK, so he got a dose of radiation and needed a new body, so they grew him one.”
“Then transferred his memories and consciousness into the new shell. That’s the tricky part.” Kadar coughed and it doubled him over. Rowan rubbed his back until he stopped.
“If they could save Ryan by cloning him--.” began Rowan.
“Why couldn’t they save me?” Kadar smiled sadly. He looked exhausted. “They could have, but I was a hundred and ten.”
“So?”
“Humans Ascendant is a powerful lobby group in the United Earth Systems. They feel all cloning and genetic manipulation should be banned. Years ago they pushed to have limits set on the use of medical cloning. An age was chosen beyond which the extreme measure of cloning a replacement body as a treatment was illegal. The politicians and environmental lobbies helped push the law through. You see, humans tend to breed, and keeping our population to manageable levels is a major concern. They picked a nice round number, with no regard to scientific reality.”
Rowan stared at Kadar. “One-hundred.”
“You are clever. Thus I was left to rot in my cancers while Ryan was issued a new form, though....”
“Though?”
On other matters, Humans Ascendant crops up as a bunch of busy bodies dictating to other people how they should live on several occasions in the book. In fact, most of the problems Ryan and Rowan face are the direct result of this oppressive organization’s interference in politics and society in general. In other places we find out, that with rare exceptions, cancer is little more annoying than a cold in this future time. Speaking as one who lost his mother to cancer and had it play a role in his father’s death, the day we defeat it can’t come soon enough. Thus I show the future world as not all black. Actually, much of Ryan’s world is a near paradise but humans inhabit it so perfection is impossible. Until next time, Keep smiling.
All, thank you for the support. Things have been progressing well...
Hi all. Well, I’m told that talking around one’s book can interest people. So here is the first in several instalments on Cloning Freedom and its universe. For starters, Cloning Freedom is set in what I call the Switch Board Universe. This comes from two curiosities of science in the universe of Cloning Freedom. The first is that the only method of Faster Than Light travel in the Cloning Freedom universe is a star gate. Star gates are point to point FTL conduits, effectively worm holes, which allow instantaneous transit between the conduit’s ends. Space is effectively folded like a piece of paper. Each end of the conduit is anchored into a huge ring. An interesting aside is that, thus far, physics, as we understand it, in the ‘real’ world would allow for this. I added a convenience that each end of a gate would have to be “anchored” somewhere on the outer fringe of a star system to work because the gravity of the star would disrupt the gate’s function. This was dramatic licence to allow for enough time for much of the book’s action to take place but also is not out of the realm of reason considering the forces involved. The real problem with star gates is that they require the energy of a super nova to create and only allow transit between the mated rings. As a result the interstellar Republic has, by in large, outlawed their creation to avoid destroying the galaxy. This is part of the Galactic Environmental Protection Act, and when a new species develops their first star gate they are given a one time pardon on the condition that they surrender one of the star gate’s ends and join the interstellar republic. This is where the switch board comes in because the surrendered star gate is transported to the switch board system where it joins one end of all the other republic star gates. This forms a FTL transport grid that interconnects all the capital worlds of the republic member species. The reason it is called the switch board system is there is a peculiarity of technological development that at sometime in their history every species ever encountered developed some variant on the old telephone switch board. As the old tech in a real way mimicked the mechanics and function of the switchboard system it made a suitable name. More as weeks pass as well as writing samples and other neat stuff. Stay tuned and please tell your friends about Cloning Freedom.
"The truth is, humans aren’t the smartest creatures in the Republic, in fact we’re on the low end of average. We aren’t the strongest creatures, though we are in the upper 20 percentile for creatures from small, rocky worlds. We aren’t the fastest, or best coordinated, though we can hold our own there too. What we are is the most vicious, violent, destructive creatures ever to join the Republic. When hardened criminals learn that we’ve been hired to hunt them down, they surrender on mass to whatever other species is at hand.”
This is an excerpt from Freedom’s Law, the sequel to Cloning Freedom. I wanted to spell out humans’ position in the interstellar republic. The idea that we might destroy ourselves before we get much more advanced than we presently are is not a new one. Also the thought that various species would compare with various levels of physical prowess dependent on the environment they developed in is nothing new.
What I wanted to touch on was how factors like these would affect our position in a multi species society. In most science fiction little more than lip service is paid to beings having differing physical capacities. Think of the fights between humans and Vulcans in Star Trek. If Vulcans were truly as strong as they say the humans shouldn’t stand a chance.
As is stated above, humans don’t have much going for us except aggression. I’ve seen cat fights where the smaller cat won simply because it was more aggressive. This happens throughout creatures that combat each other. A word of advice is never attack a young creature if its mother is around. If the mother is of a protective bent anything short of lethal force and you will not stop her. Humans are much like this in the Switch Board universe. We may not have much going for us, but we’re nuts with what we do have.
“Eight-hundred years ago humans worked out star-gate technology. By focussing the energy release of a supernova into paired, trans-matter rings, it’s possible to create a wormhole that circumvents space-time. A point to point FTL transit from the opening in one ring to the opening in the other.”
“But how?”
“If I was that smart, I’d be at the Hawking Institute for Advanced Studies. Does this look like the Hawking Institute for Advanced Studies?” Ryan gestured around him comically.
In Cloning Freedom Rowan was a Doctoral Candidate in Physics in the set region. The set region’s technology was set at approximately 2010 CE. This was for a verity of reasons that are addressed in the text. As such when she is jerked forward through thousands of years of technical development she is more than a little awed and intimidated by it. The above scene is all about that but more importantly about how little it matters in a practical sense.
I must ask, do you know how electricity works? You probably use it every day but the real nitty gritty of it is outside the realm of most folks. I know that cells in my pancreas create insulin but I would be at a loss to explain how.
The simple truth is the full body of human knowledge far outstrips the capacity of any one person to be fully knowledgeable. The concept of the resonance man is a thing of the past. This does not excuse ignorance. I do hold that it is possible to have what I call a children’s book understanding of many topics. This is general knowledge. I can understand the basic principals of how a nuclear reactor works without being able to build or design one. I can understand Bernoulli’s principle without building a plane. We all specialize.
Another thing that I revisit several times in the book is that despite the high tech human needs remain the same. A mag lev train allows Ryan to commute between contents but shorten the distance and lower the speed the reality is the same as taking a train in to a city core from the suburbs. I’m sure there were ancient Egyptians who had to catch the fairy across the Nile to get to work and cursed if they missed it. Humans haven’t changed so the applied technologies remain similar. As for Rowan, she learns what she can and focuses on what is useful like us all.
“I’m sure it’s not. No EVA ever is, but we don’t have a choice. I’m going to have to dig us out. If I can do it so that I can get the hull patched under cover of these rocks than that’s even better.”
This line from Cloning Freedom points out a realization that I think comes to anybody that works in emergency services or other high risk professions. Some things are simply not safe, necessary, but not safe.
I was a lifeguard for a very long time and was disgusted when in training a young pup ridiculed me because I used a reaching assist to do a rescue. He went on that we were trained to ‘a higher standard.’ I pointed out that we weren’t there to look macho but to save lives as efficiently as possible and that a dry rescue was a safe rescue. I’ve done rescues both wet and dry, real and in training, but my guide has always been minimal risk.
On another occasion, while I was training for the ambulance, I stood in a pool of gasoline as we extracted a potential spinal injury. We worked fast but not frantic and there was a Fireman with an extinguisher who had us covered in case something happened. Again, the situation was inherently risky, but we did what we had to with what safe guards we could arrange.
This realization of risk is part and parcel of life in general. We are all always at risk, by accepting it and minimizing the risk we create a modicum of safety even in the most dangerous of situations.
In my opinion embracing unnecessary risk is foolish. This doesn’t mean you don’t climb the mountain, it means you check your ropes. It doesn’t mean you let the person drown, it does mean you have the tools in your skill set to do the least dangerous rescue that saves the person.
In Cloning Freedom I have my protagonists doing a host of risky things but always in the sense that what they do is the best of a bunch of bad options.
“Way back in human history, during the era known as the twentieth-century CE, humans had a primitive form of entertainment. Dramas were performed and recorded then shared with an audience through a variety of means.” The hologram smiled condescendingly. “They were restricted to the senses of hearing and sight and had no emotional input.”
‘Television and movies. He’s talking about television and movies like they were hieroglyphs,’ thought Rowan.
I often wonder what our descendants will think of us. In Tinker’s Plague, another of my novels, they blamed us for the mess we left them. Having studied several ancient cultures I will say that the view of them as primitive is erroneous. They may have lacked some advancement in materials technology but what they did with what they had was amazing.
That said I must say I am not fond of Rome. Being I reincarnationist I am fond of saying that I didn’t like it when I followed Pyrrhus, and I still don’t like Rome. They were of course brilliant civil engineers and came up with the concept of total war, much to their shame and all our loss.
I am very fond of the Egyptians, the Celts and the Norse. All of these were cultures of greatness vastly superior to many cultures that followed them. At least in my opinion.
In Cloning Freedom I have people who view us in a verity of ways. I think it is safe to say that no one would want to have lived during the gene wars, history didn’t leap over the years between now and the now of the book. Looking back I’m sure Ryan can see glories and tragedies. Most people have a good take on the early 21st century from the E-entertainments and those who like repeats will have been exposed to other time periods. That said the view they do have is skewed like many peoples knowledge of WW2 because the entertainment industry is not a faithful reporter of history.
Scrambling over the cold water pipe, Ryan stood on the walkway enjoying the cooler air inside. After steadying himself he inspected the wiring. A minute later he held the insulated alligator clips open over a power feed.
“OK, here goes. Trust in insulation. I have faith in insulation. If this doesn’t work, I’m barbeque.”
Having done more than my fair share of home handyman projects, including electrical wiring, I can tell you this sentiment comes from experience. The worst case was when I had cut the power to the socket. I tested it by plugging a fan in and making sure it was dead then proceeded to cut out the wall around it. Little did I know that the fellow who had first done the wiring had run two feeds to the socket splicing them to use a common return. Saw hit wire and I found myself on the other side of the room.
Ryan’s concern is magnified by voltage. I have to say that my faith in insulation is limited as is my faith in ground fault. I’ve seen people run extension cords through ponds of water with children nearby at public events. When I challenged them on it they said it was insulated and put into a ground fault.
Safety measures are supposed to augment common sense not replace it. Electricity and water are a bad mix, as is wonky wiring that breaks code. In Cloning Freedom I show that many laws are silly and intrusive, but basic safety regulations based on the laws of nature do not fall in this category. So unless you are busy saving your lady love from a murderous cooperation please don’t trust in insulation, and do use common sense.
Stephen B. Pearl
“No! I have to see Kadar. Tell him it’s Ryan from the Star Hawk. Tell him... Tell him Wesnakee.”
Wesnakee, don’t try to look it up it doesn’t exist, yet. The idea that a shared history becomes a kind of code is nothing new. Intelligence agencies have been using it for as long as there have been intelligence agencies. Words can take on heavy meanings to individuals beyond anything that a dictionary will ever define. This is epically true of people who have shared life changing experiences.
Wesnakee to most folk is nothing. To people who have read Cloning Freedom it is first and foremost a bar on the switchboard station (more on that later) that won’t become important until the sequel, Freedom’s Law, except for its shared history between Ryan and Kadar.
In the sentence above Ryan is saying, ‘I nearly died saving your life and lost a part of myself that haunts me to this day. You owe me, and by the gods if there is any of the friend I knew left in you, you will pay this debt today.” It’s a lot to put into a word and if you want the details you need to help get Cloning Freedom published. This particular story of Wesnakee is told in Cloning Freedom though you don’t see the bar itself until Freedoms Law.
Don’t let the sequel worry you. Cloning Freedom comes to a conclusion. The sequel simply goes on as life tends to.
“No! I have to see Kadar. Tell him it’s Ryan from the Star Hawk. Tell him... Tell him Wesnakee.”
Wesnakee, don’t try to look it up it doesn’t exist, yet.
The idea that a shared history becomes a kind of code is nothing new. Intelligence agencies have been using it for as long as there have been intelligence agencies. Words can take on heavy meanings to individuals beyond anything that a dictionary will ever define. This is epically true of people who have shared life changing experiences.
Wesnakee to most folk is nothing. To people who have read Cloning Freedom it is first and foremost a bar on the switchboard station (more on that later) that won’t become important until the sequel, Freedom’s Law, except for its shared history between Ryan and Kadar.
In the sentence above Ryan is saying, ‘I nearly died saving your life and lost a part of myself that haunts me to this day. You owe me, and by the gods if there is any of the friend I knew left in you, you will pay this debt today.” It’s a lot to put into a word and if you want the details you need to help get Cloning Freedom published.
This particular story of Wesnakee is told in Cloning Freedom though you don’t see the bar itself until Freedoms Law.
Don’t let the sequel worry you. Cloning Freedom comes to a conclusion. The sequel simply goes on as life tends to.
Rowan swallowed. Henry being serious told her more about their chances than she wanted to know.
Upcoming in Cloning Freedom.
Henry was an interesting character to write. He is a complete pig when it comes to sexuality, for reasons you’ll need to read the book to understand. He is also one of the most loyal friends, in his own I know what’s best for you kind of way, anyone could ever have. With an enhanced processing speed that mean he is done most analyses in seconds he is also one of the most board beings in the galaxy.
Having completed the rough draft of Cloning Freedom I was afraid that Henry would not play with women. Let’s face it, he crude and a jerk to deal with. What surprised me is that the women who critiqued the early drafts loved him. On the page what would be annoying in life was both funny and in a strange way endearing. I fully expected to have to tone Henry down to make the book readable but thus far if anything I could have played him up a bit more. It really just goes to show you that you never know with readers.
Hi one and all. One of the things that has always surprised me about science fiction is how often medical science has remained more or less static. I look at the advances in the medical field made in my lifetime thus far and am astounded by this. In Cloning Freedom I wanted to address this. Thus later in the book you have the following scene. I will mention that Kadar is an old friend of Ryan’s who happens to be a doctor.
Kadar patted her hand. “If Ryan is doing what I think he’s doing, I wouldn’t worry too much. He has a place in mind where your origin won’t matter.”
“Nice to know. So why’s he different? Why’s he a clone?”
“Murack Five.” Kadar’s dark complexion blanched.
“I’ve heard the name, but I don’t know what it is.”
“It is a planet. There was a war. I do not wish to discuss the rest. Let us leave it that both Ryan and I received a massive dose of radiation. It so damaged us that nothing but the most radical of treatments was a viable option. It was, in effect, a death sentence, but Ryan was only eighty-seven at the time.”
“EIGHTY-SEVEN!” Rowan’s gaze leapt to Ryan then locked gazes with Kadar.
“My dear, did you think medicine would have failed to advance in the years separating the technologies we are accustom to? The average human, without use of cloning, can expect to live approximately two hundred Earth standard years. That’s about one-hundred and ninety New Gaea years, give or take based on individual biology.”
“Two hundred... Star dust!” Rowan’s already pale skin grew even lighter. “So he was eighty-seven. What was he doing in combat?”
Kadar smiled. “Paying his son’s way through university. Rowan, you cannot think of him as an unaltered human of the age of eighty-seven. Think of him as a man who was just entering his middle-years. Perhaps thirty-five by your standards.”
“Wow. OK, so he got a dose of radiation and needed a new body, so they grew him one.”
“Then transferred his memories and consciousness into the new shell. That’s the tricky part.” Kadar coughed and it doubled him over. Rowan rubbed his back until he stopped.
“If they could save Ryan by cloning him--.” began Rowan.
“Why couldn’t they save me?” Kadar smiled sadly. He looked exhausted. “They could have, but I was a hundred and ten.”
“So?”
“Humans Ascendant is a powerful lobby group in the United Earth Systems. They feel all cloning and genetic manipulation should be banned. Years ago they pushed to have limits set on the use of medical cloning. An age was chosen beyond which the extreme measure of cloning a replacement body as a treatment was illegal. The politicians and environmental lobbies helped push the law through. You see, humans tend to breed, and keeping our population to manageable levels is a major concern. They picked a nice round number, with no regard to scientific reality.”
Rowan stared at Kadar. “One-hundred.”
“You are clever. Thus I was left to rot in my cancers while Ryan was issued a new form, though....”
“Though?”
On other matters, Humans Ascendant crops up as a bunch of busy bodies dictating to other people how they should live on several occasions in the book. In fact, most of the problems Ryan and Rowan face are the direct result of this oppressive organization’s interference in politics and society in general. In other places we find out, that with rare exceptions, cancer is little more annoying than a cold in this future time. Speaking as one who lost his mother to cancer and had it play a role in his father’s death, the day we defeat it can’t come soon enough. Thus I show the future world as not all black. Actually, much of Ryan’s world is a near paradise but humans inhabit it so perfection is impossible. Until next time, Keep smiling.
All, thank you for the support. Things have been progressing well...
Hi all. Well, I’m told that talking around one’s book can interest people. So here is the first in several instalments on Cloning Freedom and its universe. For starters, Cloning Freedom is set in what I call the Switch Board Universe. This comes from two curiosities of science in the universe of Cloning Freedom. The first is that the only method of Faster Than Light travel in the Cloning Freedom universe is a star gate. Star gates are point to point FTL conduits, effectively worm holes, which allow instantaneous transit between the conduit’s ends. Space is effectively folded like a piece of paper. Each end of the conduit is anchored into a huge ring. An interesting aside is that, thus far, physics, as we understand it, in the ‘real’ world would allow for this. I added a convenience that each end of a gate would have to be “anchored” somewhere on the outer fringe of a star system to work because the gravity of the star would disrupt the gate’s function. This was dramatic licence to allow for enough time for much of the book’s action to take place but also is not out of the realm of reason considering the forces involved. The real problem with star gates is that they require the energy of a super nova to create and only allow transit between the mated rings. As a result the interstellar Republic has, by in large, outlawed their creation to avoid destroying the galaxy. This is part of the Galactic Environmental Protection Act, and when a new species develops their first star gate they are given a one time pardon on the condition that they surrender one of the star gate’s ends and join the interstellar republic. This is where the switch board comes in because the surrendered star gate is transported to the switch board system where it joins one end of all the other republic star gates. This forms a FTL transport grid that interconnects all the capital worlds of the republic member species. The reason it is called the switch board system is there is a peculiarity of technological development that at sometime in their history every species ever encountered developed some variant on the old telephone switch board. As the old tech in a real way mimicked the mechanics and function of the switchboard system it made a suitable name. More as weeks pass as well as writing samples and other neat stuff. Stay tuned and please tell your friends about Cloning Freedom.